Lessons

Lesson Info

Exposures and Cheating

I wanted to show up on here a little chart or Siris of charts here to talk about this idea of thes three parameters related to shooting in your camera, and most of you probably know this, but it's, um, useful information. And sometimes people have not seen the relationship of one element in terms of another one. So I thought I would give a second for this, especially since I found this really great chart from exposure guy dot com Great folks over there. It's just a really nice little chart because it talks about in a very visual form the relationship of thes three different things that that control your exposure. Your I s o your shutter speed in your aperture. And again, as I just mentioned, your aperture is obviously the opening is the iris in your camera theme or that's open more lights going to come in, and the larger that opening is the also the shallower depth of field, the ability to blur the background, think in terms of a large aperture as your portrait setting. As a matter of ...

fact, if you have a point and shoot camera and it has the it doesn't have manual controls. It's gonna have things like the little profile of a face that is aperture priority. It's going to open up the aperture and you're shooting Portrait's. So when you have a point shoot camera that doesn't support, uh, manual controls, you go over to the little face. You're an aperture priority. It's opening it up all the way. It's gonna shallow the blur, the background given of distractions. When we talk about storytelling, one of the most potent things you can do in your photography is get rid of distractions. One of the easiest way to get rid of distractions is to throw them out of focus. Is this where to throw something out of focus is Have a nice big aperture your F stop. The thing that could be a little confusing with the F stop is you'll notice over here, um, that the smaller the number is the shallower, the depth of field, and it's the bigger the biggest. The aperture is so if you want to think of the small like a to eight would be considered a fast setting for your camera fast, meaning that it's allowing a lot of light, so weaken use a very short shutter speed to it. It can grab it fast. What's known as fast glass? A small number for your F stop is gonna be. Think of it as a small amount that's in focus. Okay, at a to eight or 18 f stop, I can actually have depending upon the lens, I can have the eye and focus and the ear out of focus. Alright, If you're doing macron, you're really close up to a subject matter. You can get just ridiculous. See an eighth of an inch is your depth of field on something where you're opening up the aperture. So think of the small number is a very small amount is in focus, which is great for things like portrait and macros still lives. Whatever. You'll see that in a minute with some samples. The conversely, coming up here to a small aperture. Something like F 16. You'll notice they've done a great job here with a little blurring. You'll seeing you know the amount that's blurred by stopping down that f. Stop that aperture to a very small setting. A great deal is in focus. OK, so the larger the number, the more is in focus in terms of your f stop. The challenge with that is, as you've stopped down, that f stop very little light is getting in. And now you're going to need to say compensate for that because your camera may say, Dude, I'm sorry. It's son is already set. You're telling me that you not letting in all this light and yet you're not on a tripod. Which brings us to shutter speed coming over here. The slower your shutter speed. If we've got a like 1/4 of a second here, is going to allow us to do motion blur. But if we're not going for motion blur than that's a bug not a feature, as we say in the software terms. So you're gonna need to speed up that shutter speed is something like in here. We've got it 1 25th of a second, and that's gonna allow us to freeze that. But also, if we're saying well, I want everything in focus very small aperture and I want a very fast shutter, speaks that want to freeze motion. Both of those things were saying very limited light, small aperture on Lee opened for a very short time. We need somehow to bring more light into that or more sensitivity. And that's where the I s o comes in. That is the sensitivity of your sensor. You'll notice Starting at the lowest in 100 you can have very little noise. And as you move up, the problem with high I eso is you're going to get a noisier image. Basically, you're sending mawr electricity through the sensor kind like turning up. If you've got a listening to radio in your car and your too far away from the radio station turning up the volume to try and bring in the station that's too far away, all you're gonna get a static noise is static. You're throwing inm or electricity through it and thats gonna end up with noise being in your image. So how you balance out these three situations here of noise, blur or stopping of action and your depth of field is where this concept of balancing out thes thes components come in in terms of creativity, as I just mentioned, that's also we're gonna come in. If you're want a shallow depth of field up here, you're gonna need to have a camera that has the ability to open up your aperture your F stop to have that wide open If you're going to want to do motion blur photography where you want a long, slow shutter speed to blur the waterfall. So you get this nice, you know, blurry image here or those palm trees that you're seeing in the drive by shootings. Then you're going to leave that open for a long time. But that's going to be a situation where there's so much light coming in. You've left that shutter open for a long time. You're gonna need to close down that aperture to let less light in so you don't over exposed the image. So again, that camera's gonna need to be able to stop down to be I'm small. The great thing about creative photography. Now, the current state of the technology is this high. I s O. And this is probably the biggest benefit toe. What would the question was? What about having a full frame sensor or these more expensive cameras? Because that's the one area where these sorts of things come into a challenge. Low light. What can you do in a low light situations. In other words, there's only so much that could be done with a sensor that's this big when trying to gather light. Think of your eyes. So let's use theirs analogy of, ah, bucket filling up with, like, you've probably heard this, you know, way of describing this scenario. The, um uh, shutter speed is how fast the water is coming out of the tap. The I s So is the size of the bucket that needs to be filled. You need to fill that up to take a good exposure. If it's only halfway down, your got a dark exposure. If you're flooding over that bucket, it's over exposed, and it's gonna be bright white. You need a full bucket. Um, how fast that water is coming in is your shutter speed. The opening on that spigot. How big that is, How quick you're going is going to be your f stop. How much water is going to come out of that spigot and how long the water is the spigot? How long you're leaving? That's bigot turned on, is your center speed. The nice thing these days is that the size of our bucket has gotten much, much smaller. In other words, with I s O sensitivity, you can have the bucket on these things. The sensor and its sensitivity is a tiny little bucket. It was very easy to fill up, and therefore you've got a lot of control over, um, shooting in low light. You combine that with technology, which is a little bit you can add almost 1/4 leg to this scenario is technology. Every time on the IPhone five s, you take a picture. It automatically takes three and only saves the sharpest one. You can't even turn it off. It always shoots, went three shots, analyzes them for which one is the sharpest and only save the sharpest one. So for low light, when you have the potential of motion blur because you're having to shoot at this longer shutter speed because you're inside of a house with no light on. It uses technology taking pictures very quickly, analyzing them, throwing away the blurry ones as a way to compensate for the technology. It also will do the same thing in low light, where it will take multiple shots and combine the sharpest parts of the image into a sharp shot, which again is a ridiculous use of technology. In other words, they can combine different shots same thing like with HDR high dynamic range imagery. When you're taking bracketed sets of exposures, which this also does when you have now with the current IOS, it has auto HDR is an option. Any times that it finds high contrast light, really bright and really dark. It will automatically take three shots and combine the light, medium and dark exposures to extend the dynamic range. And make sure that your white puffy clouds don't get blown out. That could be turned on as a default in their automatic setting. Ridiculously cool. That's the use of technology saying, OK, we've got a teeny tiny lens, teeny tiny sensor. How could we get ridiculously good quality out of it? What we'll do is we'll take multiple shots and combine them using software using this ridiculously powerful engine. So you combining technology and things like that gyroscope. Remember shooting the panorama? As I mentioned before, I want more pixels. It's only eight megapixels. I want 28 megapixels. Sweep a panto. You'll get 28 megapixels, so it's using technology to get around the limitations of what would be traditional camera technology. So, um, anyway, you will have to make your decision in terms of your priority. If you're shooting in terms of creative photography, things like motion blur, emotion freezing. You're gonna be on shutter speed. Priority. Remember that. If you want to freeze action, the pelicans are skimming the surface of the waves. You want that it doing 500 thousands of a second? It's low light because the sun's already gone down. So you get these shots and again you'll see some samples of this. Um, you're gonna need to have that. I s o go up, all right. Even if you open up your f stop all the way, you only air leaving the shutter open for thousands of a second very short time. I wanted to be dead tax sharp. You can only open up your f stop so much it's sons already gone down. There's not like even if you open it up really right. You're gonna need to have that. I s o turned up high. Which brings up one more point about technology. Most of your cameras, these air always gonna be set up to it. Most of your point and shoots are, but even your big boy big girl cameras have auto. I eso is an option. Some people like controlling everything. I think this is a computer built into this thing and it's very smart. So auto, I s o from me is a great default setting. In other words, I'm gonna set my aperture to get the depth of field that I want or I'm gonna shoot the shutter speed to get the kind of motion blur of freezing that I want. It can choose the least amount of I S O that it needs to get the least amount of noise possible. In other words, I let it float the I S O on its own because it's a big camera. It can do that. They can figure that out, which is awesome. In other words, it says, Do you want to thousands of a second in this low light? Okay, I'm gonna go up to a 320 I s O not just 300 or 405 100. It will find exactly what it needs to be able to get that shot at the correct exposure. That's a freaky awesome use of technology as opposed to me using I s o manually, where I'd better have that set up for 400 or 600. Or the problem is, since I'm shooting it at sunset, I may be tempted to take that up to 1000 knowing that my lights gonna be going down. So I'm gonna go and I'm gonna overcompensate and give myself a very high I s o no way I could get away with it and most of the entire shot I'm more noise than I need. I'm actually degrading the quality of my image because I'm needing to compensate because at the last second, if it doesn't have enough, I s o I won't get the shot. So, auto, I s o is a wonderful use of technology in in terms of using both shutter speed for creative photography to either freeze or blur that motion aperture to either keep everything in focus or have a very shallow depth of field. I let I s l float to give me that control that I have the ability to control either of these two parameters for my creativity makes sense. Okay, okay, good. And then this is also a little chart here at the bottom, because these isso would have known as these air actually described. In stops of that, the levels are considered stops of information, even though technically an F stop is our whole F stops here from in F 28 large opening at 4568 11. These are considered full stops, and it's using the term f stop these also, in terms of seconds when you jump on your little settings on your camera, these air also doing a stop of information, and these air are related to each other. In other words, as you jump from 28 to 4 and you are stopping down that f stop your half ing the amount of light that's coming in by jumping from one to the other. There's less less than half the amount of light or the half the amount of light, as you do it every single time. You do what is known as a full stop of these things. Here you are either half ing the light or doubling it. If you're removing from 11 to F eight, I've got twice as my much like coming in as I shift from a small F stop to a larger one. The same thing goes with these settings here. Every time I change one of these settings from, say, a 25th of a second to 1/60 I am doubling the amount of light or having the amount of light, and it will affect the final exposure exactly the same way as the F stop. So these are all related to each other. I can either open up my f stop to allow more light to get a brighter exposure, or I can slow down my exposure to leave that shutter speed open longer and again allow more light in to get the correct exposure. There's a direct relationship of 1 to 1 from each one of these stops of either my aperture or the amount of time the shutter is open and the same thing goes for the I S O. Every time I switch through one of these eso settings, these air considered the full stops from 102 100 there also doubling the sensitivity or cutting in half the sensitivity of my sensor. So since each one of these is doubling or cutting in half the sensitivity. They are all directly related to each other. So if I say that I want because I'm doing a portrait, I want an F 56 f stop. Nice portrait in the entire face, typically in a portrait lands that my entire head would be in focus. Background will start to be out of focus, but I'm getting the entire face there. I don't have to worry about that. The eyelashes are in focus in the ear. It focused on the ear and the eyes of slightly out of focus. So 56 could be a nice you know, portrait one. Unless you want to get really artsy and take it down to two or something. So, um, turn that off. So if I want that here, But I know that I want to have my shutter speed because of the lens. I'm using up a 125th of a second that's here. I'm gonna have to take my I s o up to a higher setting because I'm telling it that I want this f stop. I want a limited shutter speed. I'm gonna have to bump up my eyes so they're related to each other. If I want a, um um f 11 um knocked down f stop because I'm doing a landscape and I want everything in focus. It's gonna tell me that I need to do either one thing either. Take my I s o way up again to make it very sensitive to allow for the fact that I'm having it open for very long. Or I'm gonna need to have my shutter speed open for a long time to compensate for the fact that I've got a very small little spigot with that water is dripping out. I need to have it that tap left open for a long time to Philip that bucket. Or I need to make my bucket really small by setting up my I s o. So these are all related to each other. And that's the nice thing I like about the auto eso is that it allows me toe have that float. You get the idea. Speaking of it, as an example, here's an example where I'm using a slow shutter speed, probably 30th of a second because I want to blur that motion. If it was the middle of the day and I did this. I would have to have my f stop knocked way, way down or else I'd get an over exposure. You can't have it open for 1/30 of a second and not just have a pure white image. They've got too much light coming in. So this is where it's a ness LR. Maybe really handy, because I've got complete control over this. Appoint shoot camera is not going to get this Something like the IPhone has APS. You can't control your shutter speed or your f stop on a mobile device. And a lot of your point shoots don't let you change. That is as well what it does it uses to change its parameters is it s so it's just a setting of electricity. So it uses I s O to set its exposure for a lot of these cameras. Um, which it does a great job if you wanted to imitate a motion blur on something like the IPhone is what it will do is it'll take 30 shots in a second, and then it actually combines those by doing well, double exposure, but 30 exposures and each one on late on top of each other gives you the impression of motion blur so you can actually do beautiful, gorgeous motion blurs on the IPhone with an app that's going to slow shutter and other ones like it that will imitate something like this. But they do it not by taking one exposure over a long period of time. They take a zillion short exposures and then put them all together. The great thing about that and again, I should have a sample up here. I've done some exposures looking directly into the morning sunrise from a jet, as it does a little turn from looking out the window at the sunrise. Beautiful motion, blur of clouds with all this detail and stuff like that, technically, you can't do a five second exposure looking into the bright, pure son without a 10 stop neutral density of black piece of glass on there, because there's just too much light you can't say Stay open for five seconds. Just it's impossible. Something like the IPhone you can, because it can take 30 shots, each one of those at a fraction of a second. Combine them all and you get this beautiful, beautiful blurred image cheating. That's the thing with these APP developers. They are cheaters, and I love that because it makes its them thinking outside of the box. So that would be an example where again, we're using technology to come up with different ways of telling a story, and this is being example again. I love shooting motion blur drive byes. Here I'm on a Maupin and Tahiti and at 1/30 of a second and again, it's beautiful, you know, sharp in the sense that you're seeing the details and you always like to have a nice focal point when everything is blurry. But that's a very unique story. You combine the fact that it's an infrared, so everything is this ghostly white, and you got a freaky, you know, different extraterrestrial look that you're not going to get with most camera set ups and Freaky s extraterrestrial look is my middle name, as you guys can tell. Okay, so, um, let may see some specific Let's go in here and do some specific examples. Since we've been talking about the camera, we talked about the settings. Here are some specific samples related to that technology. Thean Fred, the CPS in science that I mentioned before that are built into the camera. This is by doing a custom white balance. This will be in the class that will do later on in the week. We won't really be covering that today after lunch, but this is the color that's that's part of the infrared. It's captured in that. And I'm getting the subtleties of color here rather than it being a pure pink or purplish image because of the white balance that in camera. One thing that will do this afternoon, I will tweak an infrared camera just to show the concept is as you'll see over here in this shot. Here, we've got the blue sky, the traditional blue sky. Because a lot of people that see Pia is kind of creepy for them is I'm sweep, swapping out some of the channels. Or actually you can actually invert. The tonal range in birth gives me the colors. So cbb comes scion on Scion become sepia, and you're gonna use Photoshopped to say, Could you just do a color swap and don't change the luminosity? Don't change. The tone was actually is a blend mode where you can just say, Just change the color. So do a We'll get into it. You can just do a command. I invert the image, it becomes a mirror image and say I don't want a merit image with the luminosity. Just use the color. You do a command, I you switch the color, change that blend mode to color, and you're just using the inverted colors and you're done. So there are different ways of doing that. Okay, I think this is that same one. This is showing you without an inverted color scheme. So this image, if we can get both of those here, the exact same image one by inverting the color scheme for the sky motion blur. Tonga, if you're panning, will be showcasing this and some videos of me shooting here in Seattle yesterday, panning with subject matter, You're going to get some portions of your image which are going to be razor sharp. Hopefully, if you do this enough and, uh, then whatever you're not in synchronization with, um will be out of focus. Okay, That's what I love about it. You get these wonderful vortex of things moving in different directions, and yet you're able to get some things razor sharp. This is when we get into motion. Blur. This little fern were shooting yesterday here in Seattle and again, just the fact that we've got our chlorophyll is giving us Our contrast is wonderful for doing our little landscape of shots. Okay, Panorama is we've got you already saw a ton of those, Um, including ones we talked about that are I used the IPhone for previous to see if Thean Mages something worth shooting. But also shoot it in situations like this where there's no way I'm going to get the rigging, um, to line up. Unless I'm using something like an IPhone, It's just ain't gonna happen. So that's where something like this the technology actually is my final shot and then 28 megapixels. I've got enough to do a print, you know, a really large print. So there are some things related to technology where I am going to take advantage of mobile, not just for pre visualizing, but also for my final shot. Or sometimes I'll do it and then I'll use it, take out the SLR and shoot it traditionally. So this would be an example of my SLR being used at that same location where we did that infrared. But after I've confirmed confirmed by doing something with the IPhone that it's a worthwhile shot and I'll take it and then we'll stitch it and we'll do that. I'm taking advantage of Photoshopped, and again we'll play around with Things like this is actually is an app that's built into that You can get for the IPhone. Sure, if it's for Android yet, it's called You got to see this is the name of the APP. You got to see this and that's great. You just go like this and you paint the exposure across the image. I love it because every single shot I'm looking directly into the sun directly away from the sun. Every shot is its own correct exposure, so you're not having to worry about blending them because you're using this. What I call tossed on the table Polaroid kind of look to it, so it's a wonderful way of cheating. It literally takes two seconds. I'm just waving the camera like this. We'll talk about it when we do the Panorama class, but the same thing can be done in photo shop using the collage option within photo merge. So we'll be talking about that. Okay, again, Some of these are also big boy cameras. Where I'm gonna go in here and then shoot with my SLR once I've got, uh, it tested on the IPhone, Those of the Grand Tetons just a little while ago. And again, just absolutely love Panorama is, if you're not shooting panoramas, you should be because they're bitchin. Okay? And if you got an IPhone than the pre no cost, no obligation. And once we get into even shooting something like a fish I built into your copters or your GoPro's with the correct understanding of distortion and getting rid of lens distortion, you can even stitch panels that normally is something that you would never dio is stitch of fish islands should be impossible. And it's not. Yes, we had a question from online Jack about the aerial stuff, and I know you'll cover that more in that that section. But how long does it take? Teoh be able to fly one of those things because that introduces kind of a new element for a photographer there, actually, relatively ridiculously easy to fly because the basis of the new technology is the fact that the copters air being stabilized via GPS. You'll have up to a dozen satellites locking in on your drone, and when you look over the controls, it stays stabilized, even in wind. Another was just doing a 1,000,000 little calculations per second to stay in a location, whereas prior to that, you had to understand enough of the aeronautics to do that to compensate for that. So it's very, very easy, relatively speaking, that being said, have I crashed multiple times and do you get, you know, carried away with it? Yeah, so there are tips to it, especially when you're shooting video. Because now, for a lot of photographers, we we've never shot video. We don't understand how to pull through a scene, had a pan or zoom or push or dolly or these different things. So just because you've got a camera that you can shoot video doesn't mean you know how to shoot video. It's an art form in and of itself, so that's something probably more so than actually learning how to fly. The camera is how can you shoot in motion in something that is you know, useful Are you gonna be talking about during your Siri's or potentially sometimes today, terms of quality of photography that you're doing when it comes to printing out G clay or other types of printing? We will. That certainly is one of the main issues, especially when we're talking about IPhone or pocket cameras versus SLR camera is how are you going to use it If, really, if it for you. If I can't print out as you Clay like this, which, by the way, this is done with the power shot. 8 70 The cameras this big. Okay, so there is jiggery pokery and Photoshopped. You could zoom in on the palm fronds there and see every single palm frond. But this is handheld pocket camera, infrared out in the ocean. Pano stitch slices and dices makes hundreds of julienne potatoes. In just seconds, you can get away with bloody murder. This is going to be some Photoshopped jiggery pokery to get that. And that current photo shop has got some great anti blur options as well a sharpening as well as incorporating your images. So, yes, we will touch on that. Um, and in some ways, I know it's gonna be a little bit awkward because people who have, you know, eat breathed in dedicated SLRs entire life. The last thing that you want to dio pardon? The expression is go take this seriously or take a pocket camera something. Seriously, I'm here to give you permission. Permission that you can shoot with a pocket camera or a mobile camera and get some really freaky cool stuff with it. So But some of that is gonna be understanding photo shop in the post processing, which again we're gonna be getting to today. Good. Very, very good question. Great. Before some motion again, I do a lot of waves freezing it. So where Thousands of a second? Here. Here we're at maybe 1/30 to 1/15 of a second. We'll talk about that in terms of proximity and the movement. What you're working on, how you determine what you need to freeze, but it's actually not as difficult. This isn't easy. Japan with a psychotic crazy person who should be just locked away. But Teoh actually nail a perfect synchronization with him as he's moving is not an easy thing. But is it fun? Is it a kick in the pants is a great way to tell a story of motion drama psychotic, you know? Yes. So anyway, so, uh, motion and again, balancing out, we're talking about this idea of balancing out these different parameters of as an example. Um, here, um, the long shutter speed. We need at least 30 seconds to take this exposure. Not 1/30 of a second, but 30 seconds. Okay. Longer than 30 seconds. And you start going to get that. The stars are actually moving enough. The earth is moving fast enough that you actually going to get a blurred star. So you need to find out how long you can open it up without getting blurry. But let enough light in. Guess what you're gonna be using your I s O. Because you want that sensitivity? Because I need 1/30 of a second I can't do anymore. My f stop is gonna be a bit of a variable, right? So I can play with that, and I'll also play around with I s O. So we're gonna be getting this when we talk about night photography. Ariel, you don't have those parameters. But as you've seen before, you can get away with murder in terms of that, um, don't think I need to do that. These air. I don't have the motion blur one, But this is the kind of the scene where I mentioned using an app to get a motion blur in there. Macro love macro photography. This is where I'm gonna be using very shallow depth of field. This is a tiny little flower in Dubai. Um, probably, You know, that is what's in focus from here to here. Maybe in eighth of an inch. Okay, so that is, um, a fun aspect of macro photography. This is taken with a point and shoot camera. There's no way that I could get this wide angle field of view of something that literally is an eighth of an inch without using a wide angle that can get into within one centimeter. I can't shoot with my macro lens. That would be the equivalent of a 90. And get anything other than this little teeny view here. So again, the use of technology in this case the shallow depth of field is almost built into the technology. Once you get close up to an image by definition, you're gonna be getting a shallow image, shallow depth of field. But, um, this this is the default lens on an IPhone. I don't know. Low clip. This is how close you can get. It has about a 6 to 10 centimeter focal range on a knife phone. Throwing the background little bit more out of focus is gonna be done in post processing a little tilt shift effect. So you're going to get rid of distractions or exaggerate sharpness by doing a little softening. Fortunately, sharpening can be done either as an app or it can be done in things like photo shop or adobe camera raw. It became a Ross got a great as light room. Does a great little new radio Phil Um filter, as they call it, that has sharpness is one of the options, which means that also has anti sharpness, which means it has blurry, which is really, really cool. Changing depth of the field after the fact because we're cheating is something we're also going to be doing in post okay? And then sometimes you just want it good and these air with SLR cameras and doing it up right, okay, and Of course, everything in the world can be done with an IPhone. So, you know, that is one of the classes we actually have coming up in the last class we're gonna have. We're hopefully gonna have it, so we'll have our new IPhone. Six is in class, but, uh, we actually will have a whole class a knife, pornography.